Safa on the Hawks investigation into Jordaan: 'We want to be treated like Jacob Zuma'

The SA Football Association (Safa) says it has not been contacted by the Hawks about any investigation into corruption and has vowed to deal with the “cowboys” that are tarnishing the name of the organisation.

In a report in the Daily Maverick early this week, the Hawks confirmed they were investigating Safa.

Suspended Safa national executive committee (NEC) member Willie Mooka has also been quoted confirming he personally opened a case against the organisation’s president Danny Jordaan for alleged unauthorised payments.

However, Safa’s ethics committee chairperson Poobalan Govindasamy said on Friday that the country’s football mother body hasn’t been contacted by the Hawks and found it unfortunate that they first have to read about it in the news.

“People see things from different angles. The first thing is that if there’s an investigation, it’s for the investigator to approach the person against whom the complaint has been made and deal with,” said Govindasamy.

“We saw in our country, former SA president (Jacob) Zuma has been treated like that. Why is Safa treated differently?

“An investigation must be completed by the investigator approaching the person who the complaint is about, that has never happened. But you find that the investigation is in the news, it’s so unfortunate,” Govindasamy said.

Hawks spokesperson Col Katlego Mogale confirmed that a case has been opened against Safa without giving details.

“Yes we have a case open, that I can confirm,” said Mogale.

Safa NEC member Bennett Bailey, who addressed the media with Govindasamy, added that it came as a surprise to learn that there’s an investigation as the association has just received a clean unqualified audit from East London-based Sondlo Chartered Accountants.

“It’s now the second financial year that we are going through (with the firm). One of the findings that is to be communicated to us was the disagreement with management. That is where you differ in terms of the figures,” Bailey said.

“Within the first financial year, because there has been change from one auditing firm to the other one, the style of accounting was not understood properly. For example, we were still working on provisions to be made instead of the accruals in terms of the international finance regulatory authority.

“Our new auditors worked on that and that’s how they will audit our books. There was a difference of opinion but it was understood as to why we made provisions and accruals for expenditure,” he said.

“The point raised by them in this new audit, in terms of fraud and illegal acts, is to determine if there has been a misrepresentation of facts in presenting the financials.

“They put two categories there which are misstatement from fraud and financial reporting, and misstatement of the misappropriations of funds and embezzlement.

“They are very explicit in it, they state our audit didn’t review any instances of fraud. So, we didn’t only get an unqualified [audit], we also got a clean one,” Bailey said.

Safa have signed a new three-year deal with Sondlo.

Mooka is not the only former Safa official to point out alleged wrongdoings at the organisation. Former acting CEO Gay Mokoena alleged in the leaked letter seen that Jordaan was running the financially ailing organisation like his own fiefdom and is flouting corporate governance principles and was violating Safa statutes‚ among other allegations.

Bailey said they are in the process of instructing their legal department to find ways to deal with the “cowboys” that are damaging their reputation.

“When we read in these newspapers about mismanagement of funds, misappropriations, embezzlements and people going to wherever and wherever.

“As we sit here as the executive, we are professionals in our whole lives. We have reputations to protect and we will not allow anybody to come like a cowboy and just shoot all over us,” Bailey said.

“We are not going to allow that, Safa is an organisation that is respected. An independent firm of auditors gave us a clean bill of health and then you have cowboys out there who just want to shoot all over.

“We are not going to allow that and we will instruct our legal department to look at how we can deal with these matters.”